Introduction
City Lights is a silent film written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplain and released in 1931. He also starred in the movie, which stars him as Chaplin Tramp, who gets to love a blind child and makes friends with an intoxicating millionaire. In the film, Tramp encounters the drunken millionaire as he tries to commit suicide (Gladysz, Thomas, 2010). He successfully convinced the millionaire not to commit suicide, and they formed a friendship after this.
He developed the script in 1928, which was also when the filming of the movie began. This was his first movie that included a film score which is music that was initially written that is included in a film. The film was very successful, and it received many positive reviews.
During the movie’s release, sound films were becoming popular, but Charlie decided to continue making silent productions. The revolution of the excellent film proved to be a big challenge to Chaplain and many other silent stars (Gladysz, Thomas, 2010). His dilemma was that even if he were to begin speaking in English, his audience would automatically shrink as everyone had formed their idea of Tramp’s voice. He found it hard to impose a specific language on his character in the film as those who did not identify with English would lose interest in his productions.
Discussion
In his film, City Lights, Chaplain boldly decided that he would continue to ignore speech and produce as he had done in the past. The only change he added was the musical score to use sound creatively along with the images. He composed the score in City Lights himself.
According to him, the absence of sound in City Lights was not a weakness but rather an essential aspect of the film as it enabled him to use gestures instead. He wanted to prove that silent films were still an influential art even though the rest of the field was slowly transitioning to more focus on sound.
The Chaplain worked so hard to ensure that the film achieved perfection, which included the hiring and firing key staff to ensure that the film did not fall short of expectations. To make his case on silent films, he confirmed that the film’s focus was small and straightforward and that movements in the movie were closely knit together. He included minimal and short compositions to accompany these movements, which were very well choreographed. This ensured that the whole film had a strong flow (Gladysz, Thomas, 2010). He knew that if the film had incorporated sound, the viewers’ attention would have been interfered with, and some of the movements would have gone unnoticed. This would have disrupted the fluid flow of the film, and the desired effect would have been lost in the process.
His decision to incorporate composing music and a few sound effects was to enhance and compliment the movements in the film relatively, not to take the attention from these movements.
The film also incorporates a few title cards where some characters “speak,” but the audience does not find out what is being said among them. Even though the film does not have spoken dialogue, it still maintains clarity as the silence and body language enable viewers to analyze the meaning of movements.
Nonverbal communication holds a sincerity that is mainly lost when we talk. They often do not have a singular meaning, enabling the viewer to interpret the movements in a more profound sense (Snider and Eric, 2010). The Chaplain wanted to ensure the fluidity of the film, and incorporating dialogue would have compromised it. This confirmed the film’s effectiveness as sound would have been a distraction to the viewers.
In the film, the scenes were also held together using title cards whose function was to inform the viewers of the time and create a unity between the short episodes in the film.
Conclusion
Despite being a silent film in an era where sound was fast becoming popular in film production, City Lights emerged to be one of the highest silent movies of all time. It went against the assumption that sound technology had improved film.
Most reviews of the film were positive even though the Chaplain was anxious about the film’s response as silent films were getting unpopular. The Chaplain made a firm decision to continue with silent productions and ignore speech because this would immediately affect the size of his audience. After all, using monolingual dialogues would not be relatable to everyone (Silver and Charles, 2010). He also did not want to interfere with the effect of how the audience would interpret gestures.
He wanted to demystify the idea that sound was superior to silence, and he thought that sound would instead ruin cinema.
However, he was able to creatively incorporate film scores that he composed with the assistance of Arthur Johnson in six weeks. This was to compliment the movements in the film but not to take away the attention of the viewers from them. Therefore, the Chaplain was able to demonstrate his talent as a writer, director, composer, and star of the film, and his hard work in the film can be seen by what it turned out to be. He successfully convinced the US audience that silent film was still a powerful art form through the film’s success in an era where sound was taking over the film industry. The success of this film even added to his reputation in the film, and the film compensated for his hard work as the film had 5 million Dollars in terms of box office receipts. The Library of Congress preserved City Lights in the Americans National Film Registry in 1991(Mosher and John, 1931). It was also ranked number 11 on the American Film Institute list of the best American films in 2007. The Chaplain did, however, slowly transition to producing films with sound successfully in his later work
References List
Mosher and John C. (February 21, 1931). “The Current Cinema .”The New Yorker. New York: F-R Publishing Company.
Snider and Eric D. (February 15, 2010). “What’s the Big Deal: City Lights (1931)”. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Hearst Corporation. Retrieved September 13, 2013.
Silver and Charles (August 31, 2010). “Charles Chaplin’s City Lights .”The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved May 11, 2011.
Gladysz, Thomas (November 24, 2010). “Two New Releases Show Genius of Charlie Chaplin .”Huffington Post. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
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